The Cost of Travelling Thailand for a Month

August 13, 2018

For four weeks, we’ve been exploring Thailand at a couple of different destinations: Phuket, Krabi, Bangkok, Kanchanaburi, Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai. We’ve been travelling on a pretty tight budget, so thought it might be interesting to share how much we’ve spent over the past four weeks in Thailand – all prices are for the both of us. Prices are in Australian Dollar and British Pound.

If you’re interested in what we’ve been up to when travelling around Malaysia, then catch up with our blog here!

International Flight

Our flight to Phuket from Penang was $170/£96.

Domestic Flights

We took one domestic flight from Krabi to Bangkok which actually worked out cheaper than the train would have done and was much quicker, the cost of the flight was $175/£100.

Boats, Trains & Buses

We haven’t taken any boats as main transport, the only boat trip we did go on was a day tour, and the cost of that I’ll include in the activities section. We also chose not to take any buses across Thailand, we’ve heard many horror stories about tourists having things stolen, being drugged, and dropped off in random places so we decided to stick to safe public train transport.

Throughout Thailand, we took a train to Kanchanaburi, from Kanchanaburi, Ayutthaya and Chiang Mai – totalling in 4 train journeys costing $68/£28. The most expensive train was the one to Chiang Mai, the rest were very cheap, usually costing a couple of dollars a time to use.

Taxis

Throughout Thailand, we’ve taken one very long taxi trip from Phuket to Krabi which took over 3 hours, a private taxi from Phuket airport to main Phuket area and the rest were all small trips around cities which we used Grab for or TukTuks. I’d say the total amount of trips we took were around 15 for $209/£120.

Local Transport

We spent quite a bit of time in Bangkok, and when in Bangkok we chose to use their public transport which mostly consisted of underground trails and skytrains – I’m not sure exactly how many trips we made but over 7 days we spent around $35/£25.

ATM Fee’s

Something we really don’t like about Thailand and something we haven’t seen yet throughout the rest of Asia is just how much they charge tourists to take cash out of the ATMS – $10/£5.50 a go!! We probably spent a total of $60/£35, just on ATM fees.

Activities

Thailand has proved to be very expensive for activities, so we’ve tried to do as many of them alone instead of causing tours – some tours we’ve seen have cost up to $320/£190, which is a lot of money when you are trying to travel on a tight budget, so we usually chose not to do those. We have spent a total of $161/£91 on activities, this mostly consists of visiting temples, scenic train rides, day tours and museums.

Sim Cards/Data

We used 30-day travel Sim Cards in Thailand which we picked up from Phuket airport for around $32/£19 for the both of us. The network provider we chose was DTAC, but there were many others to choose from for a similar price.

Other

This month, we ended up spending quite a lot more in the other section – the total for this country/travel trip was $218/£124 and included things such as having our washing done, loads of new cables (we lost our charging cables, and they kept breaking), tablets/medication, manicures, and art.

Hotels

We spent an average of $34/£19, which is less than our budget of $40 a night. Although we have spent less, we’ve definitely stayed in some lower quality hotels.

Food

We’ve eaten in a range of different places, from nice restaurants to your usual fast food places too little restaurants – one thing we have stayed away from was Street Food, sadly we are just too afraid to get food poisoning, especially with my sensitive stomach. Our average daily spend on food is around $36/£20 a day on food, that usually includes three meals, snacks and water for us both.

Total Cost Spent in Thailand

Our total cost in Thailand was around (28 days): $2902/£1653, which averages as $103/£58 a day. Then we also had the added cost of $170/£96 for the international flight.

So if you’re looking to travel Thailand on a budget and still enjoy your time there, it’s definitely easy to do!

Again, if you’re interested in what we’ve been up to when travelling around Malaysia then catch up with our blog here!